About the High School Huddle

Welcome to the Citizen-Times' constantly-updated blog for Western North Carolina high school sports. Features include breaking news, scores and stats, college recruiting updates and live blogs from some of the marquee games in WNC. Readers are encouraged to comment on posts, but personal attacks on current athletes, coaches and their families will not be tolerated and are subject to edit or removal at the moderator's discretion.

The loss snapped the Bulldogs (7-9, 1-1 BSC) eight-game winning streak against Gardner-Webb (9-7, 1-1 BSC) since the school joined the Big South Conference.

Freshman forward Will Weeks scored a career-high 27 points as he set a school-record for field goal percentage in a game by going 11-of-12 from the field. Trent Meyer added 16 points, all in the second half. Keith Hornsby chipped in 15 points and went 4-of-4 from the from free throw line. He set a new school record for consecutive free throws as he has now hit 29 straight free throws. Jeremy Atkinson contributed 10 points.

The Runnin’ Bulldogs were led by Tashan Newsome with 19 points. Max Landis and Donta Harper finished with 13 points each. Jerome Hill came off the bench to score 12 points and nine rebounds.

“We didn’t play defense tonight,” stated Asheville coach Eddie Biedenbach. “Gardner-Webb ran us out of our offense and when those things happen you end up losing the game.

“We did a nice job coming back but had too many turnovers (15) and didn’t guard them good enough to beat them,” added Biedenbach. “Gardner-Webb has a good team and is going to win a lot of game this year. We simply didn’t play well enough to them tonight.”

Gardner-Webb led from start to finish and built a 20-point lead early in the second hand and 47-27 on a trey from Kevin Hartley.

Asheville inched back in game as carved the lead to nine with four minutes left on a Meyer trey. However, the Runnin’ Bulldogs got four quick points from Newsome to build the lead back to 13 points.

The Bulldogs close to six late but Newsome hit three free throws in the final 30 seconds to seal the victory.